Stop! You Won’t Fit!

We were following Vermont Highway 108, a tourist drive through Smuggler’s Notch up Mount Mansfield. The signs were incessant, no tractor trailers! Your GPS is wrong! You won’t fit! $4,000 fine if you try! I was laughing muttering to myself “You won’t fit…” clearly there have been truck drivers ready to give it a go anyway. 

We stopped to get some maple scones and headed for the 2,000 foot pass. I was looking forward to the challenge, whatever it was. We’ve managed seriously winding roads in Mexico and eleven thousand foot passes in the Rockies. Vermont? We won’t fit? Of course we will! However it actually was unique and weird up there: 

The road signed warned one lane ahead and be ready to stop. The center line disappeared and the road wound around massive rocks tossed at random into the woods. Never seen that before. The road yielded to Mother Nature. 

It was almost noon yet it was nighttime dusk up there on a gray day under the canopy. Photos don’t show steep hills very well but 16 degrees is extremely steep and I was glad we were going down hill on this side, as the road twisted and turned such that you couldn’t see any traffic coming. I crawled ready to stop instantly as uphill traffic has right of way. 

The descent went on for a while until we spotted an actual picnic area. Until then we had seen a few pullouts masquerading as parking for trail heads with no toilets or tags cans anywhere. 

There was a Clivus composting pit toilet here similar to the ones I’ve seen at Fort Jefferson National Park. We use no chemicals in our porta potty, just a sprinkle of baking soda for odor control. It’s cheap and available everywhere and won’t screw up bacteria in sewer systems so it’s safe to dump anywhere. So we did and then wandered the woods. 

That was the only facility of any kind we found on our mountain drive which surprised us. Scenic vista points, turn outs, picnic areas are all as rare as hens’ teeth in the north east. Never mind wild camping on public land. 

Rusty enjoyed the woods as he seems to have come to terms with deciduous forests after growing up in south Florida. 

I imagine these tables get a lot of use in the summer months but they did not look inviting to me. 

It was an enchanting spot all to ourselves and the temperature was quite comfortable. I’ve switched to jeans and a long sleeved shirt but temperatures are supposed to be in the mid sixties by day for a few more days.  

We came out of the state forest on our way to Stowe when we saw two hikers thumbing a lift. 

Nate and Tyler are hiking the Long Trail, 300 miles which cuts across New England from the coast to Canada roughly speaking. Survivors of many long hikes including the mighty Appalachian Trail they were hungry and wanted to be dropped off at a deli somewhere in Stowe, a dozen miles down the road. 

I think they were surprised by two old foges wild camping in a van and we reminisced about Lake Roosevelt in Arizona where Nate had friends with a houseboat and we cooked in the spring heat. 

Stowe is pretty and predictably upscale with lots of lovely stores and tons of visitors. There was no obvious parking anywhere, every street was packed but the crowds put me off so we turned around and left. 

The half hour drive to Waterbury was lovely in sunshine with puffy clouds and rolling hills and meadows and forest. 

Waterbury was an entirely different stop. There was parking and just a smattering of people hurrying hither and yon like locals with business to take care of. We parked and walked. 

A pretty town but we’ll lived in. We passed a vehicle indirection station. I thought about how my Florida registration is expiring and I can renew my 2020 van for two years for less than a hundred bucks. No inspections and all done online. 

Solar water heaters might give one hope the sun shines often around here: 

Rusty and took a humped bridge over some railroad tracks. I like railroads and leading lines and I missed them in the Keys. 

A bridge that spawned a bookstore! 

They just can’t stop thinking and being provocative, can they, these Vermonters: 

More solar panels, which are hardly ever seen in Florida, the sunshine state. 

Random artworks fascinated Rusty not one jot as he enjoyed ground level attractions. 

As usual racism finds no place in Waterbury. 

Union made Lee Jeans. Happier times maybe. 

Yes it says moose cross the road around here. I know what a moose looks like I’m pretty sure and I’m equally sure we didn’t see any. 

We did have to stop for a flock of wild turkeys making up their minds to cross the road but in Vermont no one seems to lose their cool if the unexpected gets in your way.